Turkey-Syria earthquake updates: Death toll goes past 33,000
A seven-year-old boy is rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Adiyaman, Turkey, 152 hours after the earthquakes hit [Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency]
By Zaheena Rasheed, Joseph Stepansky, Linah Alsaafin and Dalia HatuqaPublished On 12 Feb 202312 Feb 2023Updated: 19 hours agoClick here to share on social media
This live blog is closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on the Turkey-Syria earthquakes on Sunday, February 12.The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and northwestern Syria has exceeded 33,000 as rescue efforts continue.The number of deaths in Turkey has risen to 29,605 on Sunday, while more than 4,500 people have died in Syria.Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says a baby was rescued from the debris in Hatay province 150 hours after the quakes hit the region.The United Nations says up to 5.3 million people in Syria may be homeless after the earthquakes, while nearly 900,000 people are in urgent need of hot food in Turkey and Syria.The Syrian government has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside its control, according to state media.Turkey says it is working to open two new routes into rebel-held parts of Syria.You can find information on how to donate to earthquake relief efforts here.
21h ago (20:44 GMT)Quake death toll among Palestinians rises to 89: MinistryThe death toll among Palestinians as a result of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria has risen to 89, after a family of five were found dead under the rubble in the Turkish city of Antakya, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it expects the number of casualties to increase as more bodies are being found under the rubble in the affected areas. It said 38 victims were confirmed in Turkey and 51 Palestinian refugees in Syria.22h ago (20:00 GMT)Palestine sends team for mental health support to quake survivorsThe Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said it sent a team to provide mental health support to earthquake victims in Syrian shelters.“Among the tens of thousands of victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, hundreds of children are languishing in hospitals and shelters without their families and homes,” read a statement issued by the group.“Children have been going through difficult ordeals since the earthquake struck. Some of them miraculously escaped death, but after their physical survival, psychological support teams of the Palestine Red Crescent are working for their psychological survival,” the statement continued.22h ago (19:45 GMT)Turkey’s Hatay Airport resumes operationsTurkey’s Hatay Airport, located in one of the hardest-hit provinces, has resumed operations, Turkey’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure has said.“We quickly repaired the damage on the Hatay Airport runway. Our airport started to operate today,” the ministry said on its official Twitter page, sharing before and after images of the airport’s runway.22h ago (19:26 GMT)In Antakya, residents say security conditions are worseningIn Antakya, residents and aid workers who came from other cities have cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being looted.Some residents who were left homeless by the earthquake and are now sleeping in their cars or tents have said their valuable belongings including gold have been stolen.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the government would deal firmly with looters, noting that a state of emergency had been declared. Under a presidential decree, the detention period for looters has been lengthened to four days from one.Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Sunday that 57 people had been arrested for looting.23h ago (19:09 GMT)Qatar to send Turkey, Syria 10,000 cabins, caravans used during World CupDoha will send Turkey and Syria 10,000 cabins and caravans used during the FIFA World Cup, Qatari officials have said.“In view of the urgent needs in Turkey and Syria, we have taken the decision to ship our cabins and caravans to the region, providing much-needed and immediate support to the people of Turkey and Syria,” a Qatari official told AFP.The mobile homes were used for a few weeks when Qatar hosted the football World Cup last year. Officials indicated after the tournament that they would be donated.The first shipment is set to leave Doha port for Turkey on Monday, with further deliveries expected in the coming days, the officials said.
Employees walk past cabins at the Al-Emadi fan village in Doha ahead of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament [File: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP]
23h ago (18:55 GMT)WHO chief: Assad may consider opening more border crossings for Syria quake aidThe WHO chief has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad voiced openness to more border crossings for aid to be brought to quake victims in rebel-held northwestern Syria.World Health Organization Director-GeneralTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters he had met with the Syrian president in Damascus on Sunday afternoon to discuss the response to the devastating earthquake that has killed more than 33,000 people across Syria and Turkey.Rebel-held areas in northwestern Syria, which has been ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, are in a particularly dire situation.They cannot receive aid from government-held parts of Syria without Damascus’s authorisation, and the single border crossing open to shuttle aid from Turkey saw operations damaged in the quake.
23h ago (18:41 GMT)Northern Cyprus town buries last of 39 people who were in Turkey for volleyball gameMourners from a town in Northern Cyprus have buried the last of 39 people, including 24 children, who were killed in last week’s earthquake while in Turkey for a school volleyball tournament.The children aged 11 to 14 – along with four teachers, 10 parents and one trainer – were killed when their hotel in the southeastern city of Adiyaman collapsed, burying them under mounds of rubble.The team from Turkish Maarif College in Famagusta, in Turkish Cypriot-controlled Northern Cyprus, had travelled to Adiyaman for a match together with their trainers, teachers and parents.They were caught in the devastating quake that hit southern Turkey and Syria in the early hours last Monday.
23h ago (18:26 GMT)First European earthquake relief to Syria arrives in BeirutA 30-tonne shipment of humanitarian aid from the Italian government – including four ambulances and 13 pallets of medical equipment – has landed in Beirut en route to Damascus in the first European earthquake relief to Syria.The European Union’s envoy to Syria, Dan Stoenescu, said the EU was encouraging member states to provide help and that sanctions “do not impede the delivery of humanitarian aid”.But he said the EU was seeking “sufficient safeguards” to ensure that help provided would reach vulnerable people, adding the Syrian government had a “record of aid diversion”.“We call the authorities in Damascus not to politicise the humanitarian aid delivery, and to engage in good faith with all humanitarian partners and UN agencies to help people,” Stoenescu said.
24h ago (18:13 GMT)Erdogan faces nationwide anger over slow, inadequate relief effortsThe earthquake hit as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity had been falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.Some affected by the quake and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control. He has called for solidarity and condemned “negative” politicking.
24h ago (18:00 GMT)Quakes destroy more than 115 schools in Syria: UNRecent earthquakes have destroyed more than 115 schools in Syria and damaged hundreds more, according to a United Nations update, Reuters reports.More than 100 other schools were being used as makeshift shelters to host thousands displaced by the earthquake, which brought apartment blocks and even tiny rural homes crashing down on residents’ heads.
A general view shows the damage at kawkab al-Tofoula (Children’s Planet) nursery, in the aftermath of an earthquake, in the rebel-held town of Jandaris, Syria, on February 12, 2023 [Khalil Ashawi/Reuters]
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24h ago (17:40 GMT)Probes into faulty construction of buildings in Turkey under wayAs despair has bred rage at the agonisingly slow rescue efforts after recent earthquakes, the focus has turned to assigning blame.Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people are under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes.While the quakes were powerful, victims, experts and people across Turkey are blaming faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.Turkey’s construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, said the state-run news outlet Anadolu Agency.
12 Feb 2023 - 16:47 (16:47 GMT)Temblors in Turkey among ‘world’s largest’ continental quakes, says seismologistEarthquakes in Turkey earlier this week rank among the world’s largest continental quakes ever recorded, according to a Canadian seismologist.Speaking to the Anadolu news agency, Edwin Nissen, a professor of seismology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said last Monday’s temblors in Turkey and Syria are among the top five or 10 continental quakes ever recorded.“What makes it so damaging is the combination of its magnitude and its location and a densely populated part of Turkey and obviously bordering with a densely populated part of Syria,” he explained.Saying that actually the largest earthquakes normally occur in the oceans, Nissen underlined, however, that these quakes were less powerful than continental earthquakes.
12 Feb 2023 - 16:11 (16:11 GMT)Amid cholera outbreak, health fears grow in quake-hit SyriaAid groups and public health experts warn that a series of devastating earthquakes could exacerbate a cholera outbreak in Syria first detected last year.The warnings come as rescue operations ceased in both opposition and government-held portions of Syria – and hope diminished amid remaining searches in Turkey – six days after a series of quakes hit the region.Across war-torn Syria, where the United Nations has estimated that 5.3 million people have been left homeless by the disaster, “there was a perfect storm brewing before the earthquake – of increasing food insecurity, collapsing healthcare systems, the lack of access to safe water and poor sanitation”, said Eva Hines, chief of communications for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Syrian capital, Damascus.Read more here.Joseph Stepansky
12 Feb 2023 - 15:50 (15:50 GMT)‘Our pain is immense’, says Turkish earthquake survivorSerizan Agbas, 61, has been sleeping in a chair in the garden of a school since the earthquakes devastated the southeastern region of Turkey on February 6.Agbas’s apartment block is still standing but was deemed not safe to provide shelter. So she stays out in the open and shares fire and food with rescuers.“Our pain is immense. I have only 15 lira [$0.80] in my pocket, I don’t even have a cigarette,” she told Al Jazeera. “I have nothing to lose now, so I’m not afraid.”Read more here.
Şerizan Ağbaş, 61, she had a textile shop in this collapsed building [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
12 Feb 2023 - 15:27 (15:27 GMT)Lebanon’s Hezbollah sends aid to Syria’s quake-hit LatakiaLebanon’s powerful movement Hezbollah sent a convoy of 23 trucks carrying food and medical aid to Syria’s quake-stricken province of Latakia, a stronghold of the group’s allies.“This the moment of support, the moment of assistance,” senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine told reporters in Lebanon’s capital Beirut.Latakia, located in Syria’s northwestern region, is a stronghold for President Bashar al-Assad.The Iran-backed Hezbollah is a key ally of al-Assad’s regime and has openly been fighting alongside his forces since April 2013.
12 Feb 2023 - 15:10 (15:10 GMT)The volunteer gravediggers of JandarisHundreds of men were moving around in an open field in Jandaris, northwestern Syria. They seemed hard at work, lifting, calling out to each other, and carrying things around.Upon closer inspection, the grim reality was revealed: The field was a cemetery which had not been much in use before the devastating earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria last week.Now, it had become the site of mass graves, long trenches dug to inter hundreds of people who died in the quakes and their aftermath.
The trenches are lined with breeze blocks and marble slabs are laid over top of the bodies [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]
Men were rushing back and forth, unloading bodies wrapped in shrouds or body bags from trucks and passing them to others who were digging trenches big enough to accommodate 100 to 130 people a day.
Read more here.
12 Feb 2023 - 14:44 (14:44 GMT)Death toll hits 33,000 in Turkey, Syria quakeTurkey’s disaster management authority says the death toll from Monday’s Turkey-Syria earthquakes has passed 30,000, with the United Nations warning that the final number may double.Officials and medics said 29,605 people had died in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria from the 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 33,179.
12 Feb 2023 - 13:53 (13:53 GMT)Little girl rescued after 150 hours under rubbleWatch the moment rescuers save a little girl from under the rubble in Turkey’s Hatay province, 150 hours after a devastating earthquake caused the building to collapse on top of her.
12 Feb 2023 - 13:43 (13:43 GMT)Turkey arrests dozens of looters as security deterioratesTurkish authorities said they have arrested 48 people who were caught stealing and defrauding victims through telephone calls.“The properties are under risk as well as the lives of those inhabitants in the region,” said Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu.“Since yesterday, we have been seeing videos on social media. The local residents – earthquake survivors – and some security were beating some of the looters.”
12 Feb 2023 - 13:27 (13:27 GMT)Syrian president thanks UAE for ‘huge’ aid after quakeSyria’s President Bashar al-Assad has thanked the United Arab Emirates for pledging tens of millions of dollars in aid to the quake-hit country, the presidency said in a statement.“The UAE was among the first countries that stood with Syria and sent huge relief and humanitarian aid and search and rescue teams,” al-Assad said during a meeting in Damascus with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
12 Feb 2023 - 13:11 (13:11 GMT)In Antakya, an Indian search and rescue team have recovered a body from under the rubble.
An Indian search and rescue team in the Turkish city of Antakya have recovered a body from under the rubble [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
Meanwhile, aid provisions have been set up in the city, with workers offering water bottles, food, blankets and diapers.
Relief efforts in central Antakya in Turkey [Patrick Keddi/A Jazeera]
12 Feb 2023 - 12:37 (12:37 GMT)UN aid chief: We failed people in northwest SyriaThe UN’s top humanitarian relief official, Martin Griffiths, has admitted it failed to provide help to people in Syria’s opposition-controlled region since Monday’s devastating earthquake.“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths said in a tweet.“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can. That’s my focus now,” he added during a visit to the border area.Families of the victims in the town of Jandaris, Idlib province, hoisted the UN flag upside down over buildings destroyed by earthquakes to condemn a lack of help from the organisation, according to opposition activist Osama Abo Zayd.
12 Feb 2023 - 12:20 (12:20 GMT)Quake victims who have been dug out of the rubble are now being buried in mass graves in Turkey’s Hatay province.One cotton field has been transformed into an ‘earthquake cemetery’, with numbers marking where the victims are laid to rest.
12 Feb 2023 - 12:05 (12:05 GMT)Qatari emir arrives in Turkey to meet ErdoganQatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani left Doha on Sunday morning to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Qatar News Agency.Erdogan welcomed Al Thani at Istanbul’s Vahdettin Palace, according to presidential sources who shared a photo of the leaders on Twitter.The Qatari emir, who is the first head of state to pay a visit to Turkey after the deadly earthquakes, is accompanied by an official delegation.
President Erdogan (L) receives Qatar’s Emir Al Thani, in Ankara [Mustafa Kamaci/Anadolu Agency]
12 Feb 2023 - 11:20 (11:20 GMT)Family trapped under building rubble in Antakya
The chances of finding more survivors under the rubble of destroyed buildings are increasingly slim [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
Erdem Avsaoğlu’s sister, her husband and their two children lived in this building in Antakya.
They were trapped but were still alive and could communicate with their family until a fire broke out on Tuesday night, after which the communication stopped.
“This is the seventh day now, everyone is tired, we just want to find the bodies in one piece. But we can’t find anything – probably they all got burned,” Erdem said.
Rescue and search teams gather around the building in Antakya where a family has been trapped underneath since Monday’s quake [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
12 Feb 2023 - 11:07 (11:07 GMT)Turkey steps up collapsed buildings investigation, orders 113 arrestedTurkey has pledged to thoroughly investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings and has ordered the arrest of 113 suspects.Vice President Fuat Oktay said overnight that 131 suspects had so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of buildings flattened in the 10 provinces affected by the earthquakes on Monday.“Detention orders have been issued for 113 of them,” Oktay told reporters in a briefing at the disaster management coordination centre in Ankara.“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries.”He said the justice ministry had established earthquake crimes investigation bureaus in the quake zone provinces to investigate deaths and injuries.
12 Feb 2023 - 10:43 (10:43 GMT)MSF: Few cases of survival after 72-hour windowDr Evgenia Zelikova, a medical unit manager for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), told Al Jazeera that the first 48-72 hours after an earthquake is a crucial window for pulling out survivors from under the rubble.“As time goes on there will be less cases of survival,” Zelikova said, speaking from the Jordanian capital, Amman. “Our teams working in northwest Syria at the hospitals started to see less and less cases of survivors after 72 hours.”“Being under the cold weather for a long period of time is the biggest factor in losing blood and body temperature which will have consequences on the survival possibility,” she went on to say.Zelikova said of primary concern health-wise is the epidemiological situation, the cold weather, the partially destroyed infrastructure, waterborne disease, access to healthcare for those with chronic diseases, and mental health.“The Syrian population in the northwest is already at a high risk [of deteriorating mental health] because of the prolonged crisis and difficult conditions, and of course, such a traumatising event can increase their vulnerability further,” she said.
12 Feb 2023 - 10:24 (10:24 GMT)Qatar provides earthquake aid to Syria’s White HelmetsQatar has provided help to northwestern Syria’s aid group, the White Helmets, to support their earthquake search and rescue operations, the Qatar Fund for Development said.The aid includes ambulance repairs and fuel to operate heavy vehicles, it added.“The road ahead is long, but we can’t face this disaster without your help,” the White Helmets wrote on Twitter, thanking Qatar.The White Helmets, a group of 3,000 volunteer rescuers, has sharply criticised the lack of aid reaching the opposition-held areas where they work.On Saturday, the group said it had not rescued anyone since Thursday and that it was now working to remove the bodies from the rubble.
12 Feb 2023 - 09:41 (09:41 GMT)Germany offers temporary visas for quake victimsGermany has announced that people affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria will be allowed to stay temporarily with relatives living in the country.“This is emergency aid,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the Bild newspaper. “We want to allow Turkish or Syrian families in Germany to bring their close relatives from the disaster area to their homes without bureaucracy.”Read more here.
12 Feb 2023 - 09:01 (09:01 GMT)China sends tonnes of tents to Turkey: State broadcasterChina has shipped 53 tonnes of tents to aid earthquake-hit Turkey, with more emergency aid planned in the near future, state broadcaster CCTV said.The tents, sent from Shanghai, are scheduled to arrive in Istanbul later on Sunday, CCTV said.The first batch of supplies from China – 40,000 blankets – arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, according to CCTV. It is planning to send medical equipment, including electrocardiogram machines, ultrasound diagnostic instruments, and medical vehicles and hospital beds soon, CCTV said.
12 Feb 2023 - 08:44 (08:44 GMT)‘Our pain is immense’: Earthquake survivorŞerizan Ağbaş, 61, has been sleeping in a chair in the garden of a school in Iskenderun since the earthquakes devastated the region on Monday. She shares fire and food with rescuers.Her apartment block is still standing but is deemed unsafe to stay in.“Our pain is immense. I have only 15 lira [$0.80] in my pocket,” she told Al Jazeera. “I have nothing to lose now, so I’m not afraid.”Read the story here.
Şerizan Ağbaş, 61, had a textile shop in this collapsed building [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
A collapsed building is seen in Iskenderun [Patrick Keddie/Al Jazeera]
12 Feb 2023 - 08:15 (08:15 GMT)About 1,100 bodies brought across Turkey-Syria crossing: OfficialsAbout 1,100 bodies have so far been brought across the only border crossing between Turkey and opposition-held northwest Syria, officials who administer the Bab al-Hawa crossing said on Saturday.They said they were working “around the clock” to deliver bodies from Turkey to Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fled to the southern Turkish region hardest hit by the earthquake amid Syria’s ongoing civil war.
Bodies are transported across the Bab al-Hawa crossing [File: Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]
Bodies are transported across the Bab al-Hawa crossing [File: Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]
12 Feb 2023 - 08:13 (08:13 GMT)Greek foreign minister visits Turkey’s quake-hit areasGreece’s foreign minister has arrived in Turkey in a show of support, despite a longstanding rivalry between the two NATO countries.Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias met his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, according to footage on state-run ERT TV, before they boarded helicopters to quake-hit regions.Dendias’s arrival marks the first visit by a European minister to Turkey since the earthquake.The two ministers are travelling to Antakya, where Greek rescuers are helping with search and rescue operations.
12 Feb 2023 - 07:25 (07:25 GMT)Turkey trying to avoid public health catastrophe: AJ correspondentReporting from Antakya, Turkey, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith says a public health crisis is looming in the devastation.“One of the challenges is the government wants to move people from areas to stop a public health catastrophe, the air is thick with smoke and dust, there’s no sanitation, people are still buried under the rubble and are still sleeping out in the open,” he said.“So they need to provide the tents. There are some tents, here on the outskirts of Antakya, that is, they are beginning to arrive but there still aren’t enough yet,” Smith said. “The government needs to get people out of this area and these areas so that they can start trying to rebuild and start trying to clear the debris but also so they can maintain public health.”
Cranes remove debris next to destroyed buildings in Antakya, southeastern Turkey [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]
12 Feb 2023 - 07:11 (07:11 GMT)Man, 35, rescued from under rubble 149 hours after earthquakesA 35-year-old man has been rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey, 149 hours after the earthquakes hit.He was identified as Mustafa Sarıgul.While rescue operations continued in southern Turkey, hopes of finding more survivors have dimmed.
Mustafa Sarigul, 35, is carried by rescuers [Mustafa Yılmaz/Anadolu Agency]
Mustafa Sarıgul being rescued from under the rubble [Mustafa Yılmaz/Anadolu]
Rescuers embrace each other after rescuing Mustafa Sarıgul [Mustafa Yılmaz/Anadolu]
12 Feb 2023 - 07:07 (07:07 GMT)Istanbul residents fear next earthquakeAs Turkey reels from its deadliest earthquake in decades, some residents of Istanbul have already turned their growing anxiety elsewhere – towards the next big quake.“We live in distress,” said Aysegul Rahvanci, a lifetime Istanbul resident, of her fears about a possible strong earthquake in the city.Turkey is prone to earthquakes as it lies in an area where several tectonic plates meet. Quakes usually occur along the boundaries between plates. The North Anatolian Fault, which divides the Eurasian and Anatolian plates, runs close to Istanbul.Prior to Monday’s quakes, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake that hit the western part of Turkey’s Marmara region, where Istanbul is also located, in 1999 had been the deadliest in decades. That incident killed 17,500 people.Read more here.
12 Feb 2023 - 05:56 (05:56 GMT)EU envoy to Syria says accusation of not providing enough aid ‘unfair’The European Union’s envoy to Syria says it is not fair to accuse the group of failing to provide enough help to Syrians following the devastating earthquake that hit swaths of Syria and Turkey.“It is absolutely unfair to be accused of not providing aid, when actually we have constantly been doing exactly that for over a decade and we are doing so much more even during the earthquake crisis,” the head of the EU delegation, Dan Stoenescu, told Reuters news agency in written comments.The Syrian government officially requested aid on Wednesday.
12 Feb 2023 - 05:52 (05:52 GMT)Aftershocks continue to jolt Turkey, SyriaAl Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu says Turkey has experienced 2,356 tremors since Monday’s devastating earthquakes.She says experts are calling for more quality control during the construction of buildings to reduce risks in the quake-prone region.Watch her dispatch from the offices of Turkey’s AFAD agency in Ankara.
12 Feb 2023 - 04:29 (04:29 GMT)A father waits for rescue of three children in AntakyaNearly a week since the Turkey-Syria earthquakes, Hassan Guntekin continues to cling to the hope that his wife, three children and mother-in-law may still be alive under rubble in the Turkish city of Antakya.“I need my three children to be rescued. Even if only one of my kids survives, it will be a hope for me to continue living,” he told Al Jazeera. “Otherwise, there is no point to keep on living. I don’t know what I will do. Who will call me dad during Eid?”The Antakya resident said the Turkish government has “failed” in its response to the quakes.“They are so disorganised and can’t work at all. It is the sixth day and every day two different teams take part in the rescue,” he said.“I haven’t seen any officials here, neither from the government nor from the mayor’s office. I don’t want to see them anyway. They don’t come here because they know we don’t want to see them.”
Members of a Greek rescue team work at the site of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey February 11, 2023 [Kemal Aslan/ Reuters]
12 Feb 2023 - 04:06 (04:06 GMT)Survivors still being pulled from rubble in TurkeyRescuers pulled a seven-month-old baby and a teenage girl from the rubble, nearly a week after earthquakes devastated southeastern Turkey.The infant was rescued in the city of Hatay more than 140 hours after the quake, state media reported, while Esma Sultan, 13, was pulled from the rubble of a building in the city of Gaziantep.In the city of Kahramanmaras – the epicentre of Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor – a 70-year-old woman was also saved.“Is the world there?” Menekse Tabak asked as she was pulled out from the concrete to applause and cries praising God, according to a video on state broadcaster TRT Haber.Ad
12 Feb 2023 - 04:06 (04:06 GMT)Turkey-Syria quake deaths could double, says UN officialUN relief chief Martin Griffith says the death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria could “double or more” from its current levels.Commenting on the number of deaths, he told Sky News: “I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I’m sure it will double or more.”“We haven’t really begun to count the number of dead,” he said.Officials and medics said 24,617 people were killed in Turkey and more than 3,500 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at more than 28,000.
12 Feb 2023 - 04:01 (04:01 GMT)Death toll in Turkey rises to 24,617Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay says at least 24,617 people have been killed in the deadly quakes that struck southeastern Turkey.Earlier, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said some 80,278 people have been injured.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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